Hey guys, been a while! (also it has been a while since I have had the time or money to upgrade, I just put my i7 920 to rest)

I got myself a new build only using old parts for HDD space. I picked up a shiny new i7-4770K & ASUS Z87-Pro to go along with it.

I have been very lucky the last 2-3 times upgrading with very good low voltage chips, but I have a feeling I may not be as lucky this time.

I can only seem to get my CPU up to 4.3GHZ! I wonder if I am doing something wrong, I have fallen out of the tips and tricks for doing this, seeing as I have missed 3 generations of i7's.

I have to give the CPU 1.250v, and auto-syncin' the cores to 44, and that's really about it. I have disabled thermal throttling & disabled my spread spectrum. I have noticed a lot of the terms used in my bios aren't bringing up what they need to in my brain to complete this journey of wonderful OC'ing

Sorry if this post seems vague, but I am not exactly sure what's the important settings in the MOBO I should be listing.

I am sure someone around here has the same combo, that they can reference to/for me.

(BTW)

This overclock and using the settings I am , was watching a review/promo video from ASUS & Newegg about how easy it is to determine how good your CPU is. It's frustrating me like nuts to think this is all I will get out it, especially knowing that the STOCK turboboost would bring the CPU to nearly an identical speed.

Any and all help is appreciated. Any questions regarding my setup, settings or what I have done I will more than gladly respond with.

Have you tried one of the overclock presets to get an idea of what the CPU will do using the Asus pre-programmed values? I wouldn't personally settle for a pre-programmed o/c profile, but it should give you some ideas of the settings and voltages that might require tweaking to get the system stable.

Remember, you're not going to see overclocking headroom like you were used to on the i7 920 processors, and especially not what we found on the Sandy Bridge processors.

Method of IHS attachment has changed, and as the cpu die has shrank, heat management becomes even more of an issue. You didn't mention what happens when you try to exceed 4.3Ghz. Are you getting blue screens, system locks ups or BIOS resets (overclocking failed)?

you can check out this OCC 4700k OC guide , but the the 4770k doesn't have a high overclock. Th best I could do so far is 4.5 @ 1.25v . I found I kept forgetting to raise the ring frequency and past 4.3-4.4 it would just crash with it higher than stock.

Man... I read that OC'ing guide and I am really disappointed in the headroom on this CPU. I am 24/7 stable @ 4.4 but I really had expected the ability to go further. I mean considering where the turboboost lands at makes me really unhappy with this whole situation.

|v|yth0s, I figured after 4 generations it was time to retire it, little did I know all I was buying was 300mhz per core :\ Almost want to take the 4770k back.

it is sitting in the old rig which is currently under my kitchen table being used as a cat stand

Is there any way to completely disable the iGPU?

hornybluecow ,I honestly don't even know if I have a setting for Ring freq. (or maybe my board has it labeled as something else ) but It is about time I start writing these settings down and start googling them. the translation done by asus is very choppy English at best (some translations are almost quite funny actually)

wev, the main "easy mode" has a optimized setting, that does nothing except change my ram to it's XMP (I was really confused about that how that's even viewed as helping someone since the XMP selector for my ram sits above the Optimized settings button.)

Otherwise for the OC Tuner , its options are XMP, Auto, Manual..

This is really becoming a big disappointment, what happened here, Is there a new King for chips if you want to OC?

It is really funny though, I read in some places that the high end 920 wasn't that far from a 4770k, I figured it was just people being haters about a new expensive generation of CPU's.. newp.

The 920 OCed is still slower than the 4770k. The biggest benfit you get is USB 3.0 and PCIE 3.0 support. Oh and higher ram speed and amount. 24GB is just to low for the x58 (from the guy who put 48gb in just to see if it worked). I was looking at the manual (Here) and Asus must have changed the naming scheme. I didn't find the name but it's going to be in the CPU options.

Assuming 4.5ghz is the limit, the other option is to remove the IHS and go naked or redo the paste yourself. That will lower the temps and maybe yelid up to 4.8ghz.

A good solid 4.4 to 4.5Ghz overclock is what 80+% of Haswell 4770K chips will do. Even with a custom water cooling loop getting the dense thermal load to shed off the die and into the IHS is the challenge. I have one chip that good for about 4.45Ghz and another that is good to 4.7Ghz. The 4.7Ghz chip is in the minority of chips out there and in the top 10% of chips.

Keeping the ring ratio low helps overall CPU oc to a point. Ring voltage is a key, not the only one BTW to get an overclock stable.

The 4.45Ghz chip I run at 4.4Ghz in my video test rig and set the multiplier to 44, ring multiplier to 43 ( Does not like to run memory much higher than 2500Mhz at 44) using 1.276v on the core, 1.260v for the ring voltage and 1.65 to run my memory at 2400Mhz. You can choose auto voltage control, adaptive control or use the manual over ride option. I use this option for only the three voltages I change then leave the rest on auto. Change as few things as possible initially.

As much as I dont like linking outside the forums Raja over at ASUS has a pretty comprehensive overclocking guide for Haswell chips on their Maximus series boards http://rog.asus.com/...ountry=&status=. Before you say its not relevant read the guide and apply it to what you have in your BIOS. ASUS builds the boards from the ground floor up so every board has the same overclocking potential from the base Z87 boards up to the M6 Extreme. .

Yeah the biggest disappointment with Haswell has been an overall lack of headroom, but doing things like getting the crap might as well be bubblegum excuse for TIM Intel put under the IHS will help LOADS to shed heat and might give you a few extra mhz either in being able to give it more volts or just better stability running cooler.

I would definatly drops the ring bus/uncore ratio 300-500mhz behind the CPU core to see if that gives you stability higher. My 4770K craps out @ 4.4 with it matching the core, but I've had it over 4.6 dropping it back to 42, and even though the uncore portion of the chip does govern cache speeds the extra core clock will make up for it.

Either way, the 4770K is faster than your old rig and has a lot of other handy features the old platform lacks. It really is a bit of a letdown though that it doesn't OC like the awesomeness that was the Core 2 Duo-Sandy Bridge days

Ty ccokeman for that guide, it will be very useful in learning the terminology for my board at the least.

I think in the end I just had assumed wrong thinking an unlocked processor means there was something to gain versus a locked version.

I think im going to file down the top of this cpu.. is de-lidding the same as lapping my older cpus? I got some decent results thermally last time.

Waco - I will agree with that one, Everything is much more responsive and that's a very pleasant feeling. However since I upgraded everything except some old sata HDD's I Think I didn't notice it as much. I do really enjoy the newer ports.

-side note-

-Ivy are you saying that

AMD = more headroom for OC's? I hope I didn't hear that right.. I have always viewed AMD since X2's to be inferior, are the times a changin' now?

ccokeman, if the headroom is dropping consistently, we all know intel is aware of this too. Is this going to become a continual trend do you think?

I hope intel didn't just stop givin' a toot about us enthusiast PC users... I mean, the PC market has taken such a monster hit, you would think they would care just a little to keep their portion of the market. Many other manufacturers lead the race in mobile processing and that seems to be the biggest hit to desktops. even NVidia's attempt to get into the market hasn't done very well at all.